Welcome back to the weekly D&D and Tabletop Gaming thread! Here’s a place where we can talk about Dungeons & Dragons or any other tabletop games that you nerds might be into. Tell us about the games you’re playing, speculate about future expansions, recruit your fellow Avocados into new groups, whatever you want.
Lately I’ve been feeling the itch to play D&D more, and I mean play as a PC rather than run a game. (I think this mostly stems from having taken a couple weeks off our regular saturday night games, which put me in character creation mode and has me feeling like i’m brimming with ideas for characters I want to try.) But between my job, my kids, and life in general, starting a new regular game isn’t very likely to happen, even if I knew anyone else who wanted to play and, more importantly, run the game. But a recent video I saw on YouTube has me considering the possibility of seeking out a “West Marches” style campaign.
The West Marches is a style of TTRPG play that is meant to episodic and player-driven. The name comes from a blog post that popularized the concept, which lists three main defining features:
1) There was no regular time: every session was scheduled by the players on the fly.
2) There was no regular party: each game had different players drawn from a pool of around 10-14 people.
3) There was no regular plot: The players decided where to go and what to do. It was a sandbox game in the sense that’s now used to describe video games like Grand Theft Auto, minus the missions. There was no mysterious old man sending them on quests. No overarching plot, just an overarching environment.
The post goes on to explain that the motivation behind this original West Marches campaign was to avoid player apathy by putting the players themselves in charge of determining both when they played and what they did in game, as well to allow game sessions to more easily fit into hectic schedules of adult life.
Despite putting many of the decisions on the players, actually running a West Marches game does require some heavy prep from the DM. You have to plan out everything in the area, populating the countryside with dungeons and monsters, as well as rewards, treasures, and mysteries to entice players to leave the safety of the town. Also, instead of running a single weekly session, you’re potentially on the hook for running multiple sessions each week, with different groups of people each time, that are all interconnected. It’s sort of the ultimate “sandbox” type game, where players can go anywhere and there’s no guarantee that the adventures they take on will really be appropriate for their level. It also encourages players to talk about the games between sessions, to report back to the larger group on what happened during their sessions, share any new information gathered, brag about the loot they got, and of course gather a party together to head to the next dungeon.
I find the concept intriguing. It seems to me like there’d naturally be less focus on inter-party character dynamics and storyarcs (ie, the kind of thing you see on shows like Critical Role), and more focus on exploration, puzzle solving, and combat tactics. Has anyone had any experience with the West Marches style of play, either as a player or DM? Please share your thoughts in the comments!
[spoiler title=”Players and Characters”]Wafflicious is back in the DM’s seat to continue our 5e Cthulhu Mythos adventure. Our players include:
- JosephusBrown as Anton Illinois (Human Inquisitive Rogue/Fighter), a disgraced archaeology professor who has turned to seeking arcane rituals
- CleverGuy as Bastian Updelver (Deep Gnome Alchemist Artificer), an eccentric local potionmaker
- TheHayesCode as Hazel Green (Dhampir Spirits Bard), a flapper, séance MC, and aspiring spiritualist
- Spiny Creature as Ku (Kenku Twilight Cleric), a local priestess of Bastet, goddess of protection
- The Wasp as Leah Zann (Tiefling Great Old One Warlock), a professor from Miskatonic University who accepted a deal with Yog Sothoth to get an advantage over her male colleagues
- The Ugly One with the Jewels as Minty Rocksmasher (Dwarf Berserker Barbarian), survivor of an eldritch accident which decimated her tribe[/spoiler]
[spoiler title=”Escape!”]
Excerpts from the notes of Bastian Updelver…
Alarms were blaring as Hazel reappeared, having just set the last of the demolition charges. Xuxuxlu screamed in our heads to get back to him with the detonators. No one else had come in to the mind-swap chamber we were in, but we knew there’d be more guards in the hallways. All we had to do was reach the lift-tubes, go up one level, and make it back the chamber where Xuxuxlu had set up. Aside from the guards, the biggest problem was that lift-tubes would only fit one Yithian body at a time. I grabbed the disruptor gun from the guard we’d killed, knowing we’d have to fight our way free.
After a deep breath, Anton opened the door to find two Yithian guards waiting right outside. He tossed a silver oblong grenade over their heads and it exploded, stunning one of the two guards. Hazel followed up with a Hypnotic Pattern that put the other guard in a trance. We all started to run past the incapacitated guards, and Minty jumped into the lift first. As a third guard came around the corner, and the stunned guard started shaking itself back to consciousness, Anton ran the other direction toward another lift-tube. Ku yelled a Command at all three guards to flee, and the closest guard turned to run, spurred on by Hazel’s Dissonant Whispers. The guard at the far end of the hall took a pot shot at Ku, but missed and Ku headed up the lift after Minty. With the near lift in use, I ran past the still hypnotized guard by the door and headed after Anton towards the next lift. Leah was firing off her Eldritch Blasts at the guards, but she and Hazel both got hit with disruptor blasts, and Leah collapsed to the ground, unconscious. I couldn’t leave her behind! I ran back and give her a healing potion, even as the guard that had been hypnotized shook itself awake.
The potion was enough to get Leah up and moving again, and she stumbled into the lift tube. Knowing that she had most of the detonators that Xuxuxlu needed, Hazel turned herself invisible. Suddenly, I was the only alone with three Yithian guards bearing down on me. The nearest one started in with its pincers–I knew I wasn’t going to make it. I heard Hazel whisper something as she snuck by me into the lift and she grabbed the last detonator from my pouch. That’s when I noticed there was still one more potion in my bag–but I had no idea what it would do. It tasted like metal and made me feel…. not healthier, but tough, like I could take on anything. When the guard tried to attack me again, even though I felt its pincers slamming against me, it was like they just bounced off. I was invincible! I backed into the lift tube as soon as I could, cackling like a madman and shooting my disruptor.
I reach the top find Minty waiting by the lift. I was the last one up, and I knew at least one guard would be following. Minty and I briefly tried to destroy the tube, but it was tougher than it looked, and we decided it was a better idea to get out while we could. Knowing that I was invincible, I told Minty to go ahead while I held off the pursuing guard. We ran through another empty mind-swap chamber towards Xuxuxlu’s hideout. As I came out into another hallway I suddenly felt myself being pulled toward a small black sphere in the center of the hall. I quickly jammed my pincers into the floor to stop myself, and I saw that two more guards had come up the lift in this hallway, but were currently being sucked into that little black hole. Minty and I fought our way past the black hole while the guards were still struggling and made it into Xuxuxlu’s hideout.
Everyone else was already there, loaded into mind-swap tubes. Xuxuxlu locked the door behind us and told us to get into a tube as he rigged up the detonators to blow. The door wouldn’t hold for long, but it was enough! Xuxuxlu jumped into a tube himself and as the door burst open and guards started firing their lightning guns and disruptors at us. The last thing I saw before being enveloped in green light was the countdown on the rigged detonator clicking to zero.
We woke up back in our own bodies, still in the camp we’d left behind in the woods. I was a bit shaken from the mind-swapping process. I swear I saw things while I was in between–things that were scaly and had big glassy eyes. Let’s just say I’m not sure I’ll ever look at a fish the same way again. But Dandelion was there, watching over us. I heard that Ku had kept one guard pinned down by continually using Command to force it grovel on the ground. And that black hole that had kept them from moving afterwards came from an experimental singularity cannon that Anton had fired off. Dandelion seemed pleased that we all made it out, and said something about another mission, but I was a bit distracted making sure all my supplies and potions were intact. Maybe I can re-create that invincibility potion…[/spoiler]